The Sun Also Sinks

To the madman in his room war is pretty from afar, full of noble motives and death's glory blown by winds of destiny no man can refuse.

From the mountaintops the madman crows, flattering the blood of battle as war's worshipers slash souls upon Satanic crosses.

Godless is the world, every beast and being a refugee in homeless wandering through boundless battlefields, seeking but never finding, praying but never healing, Gothic smoke burning arid lungs.

As pointless to fight as to not fight, goodness escapes the planet like air from a punctured balloon, desperate to be held onto, impossible to grab.

Laughing hyenas lead sheep off a cliff, calling it doom's victory to give hope to  destroyers who sacrifice their precious children for their precious right to be angry.

Who can see the sun with polluted eyes? Who can see the Son with a polluted heart? What means mercy to the dead?

Unspoken words like an underground lava stream flow to a boiling release of slandered love to be denied no more.

Annihilated will be the annihilators, consumed will be the consumers, taken will be the takers, given will be the givers, dreamt will be the dreamers, loved will be the lovers.

In the darkest hour after the sun has sunk, hope must see beyond the horizon.

Take The Male Anger Test!

1. Which makes you angrier?

• (A) Your child lying to you
• (B) Your President lying to you

2. Which makes you angrier?

• (A) A 40 year old man flashing your teenage daughter
• (B) A 15 year old boy impregnating your teenage daughter

3. Which makes you angrier?

• (A) Agreeing with someone you hate
• (B) Hating someone you agree with

4. Which makes you angrier?

• (A) A poor person calling you an asshole
• (B) A rich person calling you an asshole

5. Which makes you angrier?

• (A) An immigrant receiving welfare
• (B) An immigrant dying from exposure

Responses:

1. You should expect more from your child than the leader of the free world!
2. I'll morally fuck up that pervert flasher ruining my daughter's life!
3. Never agree with someone you hate or you can't keep hate alive!
4. Poor people need to stay in their place while we're oppressing them!
5. People feeling entitled need to die!

A Stranger's House

Up the walk and through the door
To my house I am a guest;

I recognize things once mine
To this unwanted pest;

Sleeping in a stranger's bed
I wonder when I'll rest;

Unseen silence fills the room
Like a rising tide to crest;

Inside/outside doors the same
No place is ever best;

My home was within her
Inside her beating chest;

The light is gone to endless sleep;
My dreams by darkness wrest.

The Physics Of The Human Equation

"Look, Bill, if this is about reliving the 60's, you can forget about it, buddy. The movement is dead."

"Yes, of course! Hence the name: movement. It moves a certain distance, then it stops, you see? A revolution gets its name by always coming back around in your face. You tried to kill me you son of a bitch... so welcome to the revolution."
- 'Under Siege'

Name the movement: #metoo,#timesup,#neveragain,#blahblahblah. Our guilt comes to the surface but guilt won't save us - not one little bit. But we perpetually need the appearance of going in the right direction because the opposite "is too hard to think about", as one TV talking head put it. Yeah, well, try living it if you think just contemplating it is hard. And, yes, it is a living hell. But the one question no one will ask is: why are so many people in pain? Why are kids lashing out with guns? Why does so much abuse pervade us as a planet? We don't ask those questions for a reason but until we do change for good won't come.

But I understand it's pleasant to think otherwise.

For it's the people living in bubbles who drive us. And I get the allure of that. You're living the high life in San Francisco, making big bucks, "transforming the world", feeling you're making a difference that justifies your sense of entitlement to run roughshod over that very same world. Who doesn't want to have their cake and eat it too? Those without the money and power also want their bubble. A superhero politician is going to save us, some mythical force will set things right so we don't have to, just fill in the blank on something saving us. It's all hogwash.

The fear welling up inside us turns just about everything into a religion these days, with technology being front and center to provide us "solutions" for our wicked ways. We are both Pontius Pilate and Judas rolled into one: betraying our future while washing our hands of it at the same time. We treat the fiction of nations as fact. We treat the illusion of money as reality. We treat the laws of men as the laws of Nature. In doing this, our suffering will grow and grow.

“We connect people. Period [unless they show a female nipple!!!!]. That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it. That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs someone a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people.”
- Facecrook executive

So nation can rise against nation but it makes us no less one world, one people. We can sanctify torturing people for not having money but that makes it no less a human crime. We can justify in our minds poisoning our planet but that makes us no less dependent on it. Yes, there is a movement afoot - but we dare never speak of it. Things we see but never say because it's just too horrible to contemplate the eventual outcome. So we are creating a revolution whether we choose to face that or not. It's the factor of human misery we fail to put into our equations.

Regardless of the reason for misery, every miserable person is part of the #destroytheworld movement. No literature or Facebook page or rallies are needed for this movement. It happens all on its own as each person decides life is not worth living in the way we have deemed it. A tipping point is reached, sometimes without even fully realizing it. Slaves pray for the world to die and those dependent on slaves pray for the world to die. It's the true and final no-win scenario.

"The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes anymore--cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble;cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; Ferraris and Maseratis; and human beings sold as slaves into iPhone factories and fast food outlets.

The merchants who sold these things and gained their wealth from her will stand far off, terrified at her torment. They will weep and mourn and cry out: "'Woe! Woe to you, great city, dressed in fine linen, purple and scarlet, and glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls! In one hour such great wealth has been brought to ruin!' Every sea captain, and all who travel by ship, the sailors, and all who earn their living from the sea, will stand far off. When they see the smoke of her burning, they will exclaim, 'Was there ever a city like this great city?'

"Rejoice over her, you heavens! Rejoice, you people of God! Rejoice, apostles and prophets! For God has judged her with the judgment she imposed on you." Then a mighty angel picked up a boulder the size of a large millstone and threw it into the sea, and said: "With such violence the great city of Babylon will be thrown down, never to be found again."

-Book of Revelation

Good fucking riddance. We can discuss and debate all the policies we want but we fail to factor in plain old human happiness into our equations. And I don't mean the false, bribed happiness that rots the conscience. But the kind the fulfills the heart and destroys our lies. Because that's our Boolean choice: destroy our lies or destroy our world. Make all the arguments you want for a formula for a loveless world to have a future but it only makes life worse. Until we understand the human equation all other equations are irrelevant.

World Turning

ALICE IN NETHERLAND

"War is like the wind," she said on a whim. "No one knows where it comes from or where it starts. We just hope it doesn't blow our way. And then one day it's over and gone, and we are left wondering if and when it will return."

"I saw the President today, oh boy. Many people are angry with him. He seemed fine to me. I didn't understand a word but he sounded brilliant. Life's too short to be angry all the time. Just let it go."

"Life is a miracle. Plants magically rise up from the soil. Every minute a new birth. Each day a new chance. We don't have to see the sun to know it's shining somewhere. No need for questioning."

"Someone asked me of my vote. I said who am I to force an opinion on others?"

"How do you know what you know? Does anyone really know anything? Who knows what the truth is. I know I don't know."

"Just let me be. Just let me be. Can you let me be?"

*************************

SLEEPING UGLY

"Here's the manuscript." I plopped it down on the table in front of her. I had worked day and night on it for months, straining myself to the limit, taking the writing as far as I could go. "I need you in order to finish this."

"Me? I can't help with that!"

I looked at her in disbelief. "Never mind!" I picked up the work in disgust, walking away.

"Well, wait! What could I ever do?" She got up to follow me. "What exactly is it you want? Who ever said I could write." I kept walking, not looking back. "You see, I've never really had a nurturing environment, and things didn't work out for me. This is all that I am." She would say anything as long as it was nothing. "I think you really have some misguided opinions of me! You must think I'm something I'm not!" I stopped listening. "Be like that! If you want me to do something, I will. Then you'll see I'm really nothing and can't help in anything real. Maybe I could sharpen your pencils."

Every week I got a new note from her explaining why she wouldn't/couldn't/can't have helped me ("Don't you appreciate my integrity in telling you this??"). Was years before she stopped. Then she lost her mind, dissipating into oblivion.

*************************

FAITHFUL INFIDELITY

Without warning she got old at the candidates' debate, a fossil fool. Embedded deeply in the mad throng she suddenly forgot why she was there, stranded among the masses. They knew when to cheer and when to jeer. Mad passion consumed their faces. She was one of them when she arrived. But not now.

"Could it be..." She dare not finish the sentence.

What was she doing alone in the world? She never wanted that. Can't vote oneself a husband and a family. Coming home to an empty house after attending her "Fix the world!" rallies drove her to a bottle of Gin. Her jokes were clever but her choices were not. She came to the debate so completely sure of herself and in the twinkling of an eye when she wasn't looking, her life reversed.

Back at the house building in the silence of her manicured couch, she had no appetite for the plate of leftist vegetables laid out before her. In her years of rot she'd begun to carefully manage her behavior to match the correctness of her political stances. In this way she'd avoid charges of hypocrisy. But her hypocrisy lay in doing what others wanted instead of what she wanted. She'd made a career of not living for herself.

That satirist who'd invaded her political talk show that morning had put a pea under her mattress.

"I call this story "The Weather Vains". There's a deadly toxic cloud east of the City and forecasters are showing weather vanes pointing directly to the town. But rather than evacuate and save themselves, the greedy citizens devise a plan. "We'll change the direction of the weather vanes - which means the wind has changed - and then we're saved!" These people had come to worship technology and were very proud when they devised mechanisms that caused the weather vanes to point in a direction that blows the cloud safely away.

"The leaders were rejoicing in their hero's reception when the news came in showing the vanes' new direction. Truth had lost all meaning to them. Then, of course, they got wiped out anyway. And that's how I view "balanced budget saviors". They are missing the overall. No possible way exists to make greed work. That's why everyone says it's "politically impossible" to balance the numbers. We are an unbalanced people. Fix the people and you'll fix the economics."

She had hoped to fix herself by fixing the world. But she needed to fix herself if to help the world. Damn. What can anything mean without a family? She was lost at sea. So many years wasted. She was motionless; embarrassed; the only sound the ticking of the living room clock.

Coward Ice Price

He was a pretender among pretenders - but did not know it. He thought only he felt they way he did. Sitting alone in his WWI machine gun nest was to be crucified under the sun. Every fiber of his being screamed to run away, to be free. This wasn't his war. He'd just been scooped up in it. He wanted to be with friends and girls feeling good but they told him this was his duty, that to want to live is irresponsible. It's the dead who rule the world.

This hell went on day after day, hoping against hope he'd never have to fire his gun. He saw the barrel glinting in the light. "What an ugly piece of machinery that rules my life." At times he'd convince himself he'd get out of the war unscathed in this quiet outpost of the desert. Other times he'd go to pieces. Only thing he knew for sure was that he could let no one know of this private inner war.

Shame tormented his sleep. He saw others laughing and carrying on. Obviously they had none of his self-doubts. He did see a few others with a lack of certainty in their eyes. They were a brotherhood who dare not speak. Slowly, the defect he so desperately tried to keep down bubbled to the surface, reaching full realization in his mind: "I cannot kill." He prayed to God to free him of this nightmare, but to no avail.

Musicians are frivolous, fighters are valuable. That's what he was told when they dragged him away. People who'd never known dreams were the mercenary messengers of this fate. These ice-hearted souls felt useful as they delivered their victims to the army enlistment camp. Those deliverers were machinery just like the glaring gun that lorded over him in silent insanity. It seemed to him in his daydreams that those who thrived in this war were cowards of peace, running from life to find salvation in death, that to die gloriously would somehow make up for a lifetime of failure.

The "Vacant Ones" had no issue when pulling guard duty. All time was the same to them. Their minds did not run a million miles a minute driven by creative impulses that had no possible release. He could foresee a time when wars ended forever that a creative explosion would occur. It would be a time of colors and celebration and tables would be turned with the men of war being on the outside, no longer able to hijack lives, stewing in the corner with things they must let go of or die. That was a definition of duty they feared more than death.

But this was not that time.

The Dream Killers were the worst, always talking about honor and betrayal. Turning men into instruments of war was their sick twisted dream. Like religious fanatics they hunted for souls like his to pounce upon if they dare not embrace the hells of war. This was their season in the sun. As they had felt betrayed by life they reveled in betraying others. As they had failed to honor love they demanded honor for self-betrayal. They claimed being a killer was the only way to live.

When the raiders came charging on their gleaming horseback run he saw the flesh of man and animal in all its wondrous life and could not put death into it. Turning to run away he was shot in the back. The outpost was overrun and men died because they depended on a musician to be a killer instead of a man. But this tragedy did not dissuade them, a lesson unlearned and doubled down upon.

A hundred years nigh the arc of insanity continues ever higher. Soldiers who can't fight are killed. Soldiers who do fight kill themselves. Children shoot children under heavy expectation. Nobody is a killer, only fools try; the time has passed. The world has become too cold a place. Every last thing that is named to be saved by killing will be destroyed. There's only one thing in this God forsaken shithole that is real and that is family. I want mine.

D.E.A.D.

I cannot escape the abyss. I kept looking for a way to be productive outside of my emotions. Now all I have is chores, chores, and more chores. Sterile, obsolete, isolated. I just want to cry. I walk in a perpetual minefield. Every step can blow me to bits. But I must find a place where I can rest. Can't stop moving. Hell upon hell. My sins are untold. But the price remains the same. No one to touch. No one to hold me. A ghost.